Nocturne

Background and Commentary

“Nocturne was one of the later songs that we wrote for the record after the break that we had. There was a group of about five or six songs that came from a two week period of just what I would consider the best jams Alex and I have ever had. I really love this song. I love the drum pattern, especially the way it starts. It’s kind of about the questions you can subconsciously answer in your dreams without realizing it.” (Rockline, 2002)—Geddy in Songfacts

Neil says that an article in the November/December 2000 issue of Utne Reader called “What Do Dreams Want?” contributed to the ideas in the piece. In that article, originally titled “Night Eyes,” the writer talks about a series of vivid nightmares that led him to suspect something was going terribly wrong in his body. Visits to his doctor confirmed he had a cancerous tumor in his thyroid gland. Subsequent dreams, in which a voice says, “You have been living on the outer shell of your being; the way out is the way in!” helped guide him in his decision-making on what to do. After his treatment, he wrote a book called Healing Dreams on the ways our dreams communicate important information to us.

The piece is considered one of the more experimental on Vapor Trails. “Once we had a few songs finished that we liked, the newer ones started to get weirder. Daring grows out of confidence (or what the ancient Greeks called “hubris,” I guess), and from this combination came “One Little Victory,” “Ceiling Unlimited,” and “Nocturne.”—Neil in the Vapor Trails tour book

Lyrics

Did I have a dream?
Or did the dream have me?

Set off on a night-sea journey
Without memory or desire
Drifting through lost latitudes
With no compass and no chart

Flying through hallucination
Distant voices, signal fires
Lighting up my unconscious
And the secret places of the heart